On director Craig Brewer's new Web series $5 Cover, Amy LaVere portrays a real-life Memphis Belle, a sweet-voiced singer-songwriter who pens songs in her underwear and has had her heart broken one too many times.

In the real world, she's exactly the same. Though we can't vouch for the whole underwear thing.

Growing up on the Texas/Louisiana border, LaVere drifted to Detroit as a teenager, fronted a punk act, then eventually landed in Memphis, where she released a Country-tinged solo album and eventually caught the eye of Brewer, who cast her in his 2007 film "Black Snake Moan" (she also had a roll as Rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson in the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk The Line"). But acting isn't her first love ... music is.

Which is why, despite her burgeoning film career, LaVere shifted her focus back to writing and recording. She didn't want to be known just as the pretty little actor/musician with the upright bass ... this was Memphis, after all. And cute doesn't cut it.

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